Listen. If you weren’t around the Scene TM circa 2006/7, it’s so easy to look at Emo culture, and all of its products and think there is just no way it wasn’t satirical.
There’s no way someone could’ve written My Immortal and been serious about it, right? Unfortunately, wrong.
In order to provide a primary source, I will admit to my own embarrassing phase.
Among my friends in 2006-9, anything “mainstream” (Hollister, Aeropostale, Abercrombie), was acknowledged with disgust. Flare-legged jeans were unconscionable. Hot Topic was a god we all prayed to. When our dying mall lost its store, my friend actually organized a goodbye meetup; it was like a wake.
I can’t tell you how many times we sneered about “The Preps.” There was such an Us vs. Them mentality, and I don’t know why I was so angry about American Eagle pants and Polo shirts at thirteen. But boy was my blood on fire.
I woke up an hour-and-a-half early every morning before school to tease my hair. We cut holes in long socks to make arm-warmers. Bleach was vital, but toner apparently didn’t exist, and we were all yellow-headed fifteen year olds with a problem with the whole world.
Twilight was for casuals, but we read it anyway. Vampires were in. “Guyliner” was in, sometimes my friends had to help each other out of our jeans.
Things like “rawr XD” and “I’m so lol random waffles-tacos!!!!!!!!! GLOMP” Were Not Ironic.
This was teen culture, I’m telling you. It wasn’t a joke or satirical.
Listen to me when I say that, when it was published, those tropes didn’t exist yet. That piece of fanfic INVENTED some of the tropes we have today surrounding embarrassing internet culture.
I could probably write a dissertation on this tbh.
Oh my god how dare you make me relive my past
Ahh! This was so me and all my friends in high school. Goodness, that seems so very long ago, like another lifetime, really.
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